


(Do You Ever) Think About Me

by th_esaurus



Category: Actor RPF, Rocketman (2019) RPF
Genre: M/M, Phone Sex, Unhappy, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 17:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19431169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: Richard’s just always been so happy to oblige him. So completely calm about the undefined closeness of their relationship.





	(Do You Ever) Think About Me

**Author's Note:**

> SORRY

There’s a moment, barely half a minute really, when the pilot tells Taron to sit tight and hops out to check the skids, where he feels completely, unutterably lonely. The rotor blades are winding down, and he can just hear the music from the far fields, made mute and otherworldly through his headset, no single song able to break out from the cacophony. Like the sound of the ocean in a seashell. 

The past month has been so noisy. Premieres, his name yelled from the press pit, interviews, Dex’s jovial praise, the ping of his phone - emailed reviews from Elton, dumb memes about thicc thighs from friends, Richard checking in on the regular - the panicky clatter of boarding gates and the droning buzz as he flew here, there, fucking everywhere. Then a week at home, the happy sounds of kids and family, his little sisters goading him into almost constant karaoke; the warm glow of his mum’s voice. 

He thought he needed some time to himself. Glastonbury’s infamous mud pits: the great equaliser. Humbling anonymity.

Instead, he just feels alone.

*

He has no clue where to start. Feels at once like one of those wandering assholes who come to a festival for the vibe instead of the music. Taron adores the cheese of those old bands still trooping on into Naughties, determined to groove to at least one Janet Jackson banger later; he missed the Proclaimers already. A genuine disappointment.

The long waves of people seem so driven. Slow but content in their wandering, all knowing where to go. Swathes of skin, shoulders and thighs bare in the unfathomable heat, guys with slick-wet hair from dousing themselves in water fountains, women with little battery-run fans dangling around their necks. All the white girls are either pale as linen or burnt, angry red tips on their noses and ears, but everyone resigned to their fate with calm, amused acceptance. Taron’s as unnoticeable as everyone else in his John Lennon shades, could easily let himself be buffeted along by any one of the meandering streams, but he feels weirdly terrified to dive in. Weirdly scared to make a bad decision.

He checks his phone; always has the time in Los Angeles at a glance. Snaps a selfie with the crowd behind him for context and messages Richard: _who should i see???_

He waits with his phone in his hand for a long time, but there’s no immediate reply. People part amiably around him, continuing conversations over his baseball cap.

Still no reply.

He pockets his phone. 

*

He should’ve asked Richard to come. Didn’t want to bother him, drag him back to Blighty for a spontaneous day in the park. 

But he should’ve asked anyway.

*

Taron’s relief at seeing someone he knows is as full-bodied as rich wine. Edward’s got a stupid fucking goatee and is wearing the oldest, most moth-eaten t-shirt known to man, but Taron would recognise his cheekbones from a mile away.

“Ed Holcroft!” he booms, arms spread wide, all showman. Edward turns, his frown melting into a grin as he spots Taron, and they hug magnanimously, backs slapped, chest bumped. 

“We’re three beers in so you’ll have to catch up,” Edward tells him, ushering him towards the bar, and his hand on the small of Taron’s back is the best feeling in the world right now. Familiarity; pleasant ease.

It’s easy to swap anecdotes: upcoming projects, recent holidays, coincidences, paths crossed. Edward, holed up in London, reels off a dozen incredible plays Taron’s missed in the past year, and they lament theatre becoming such a second fiddle in his life. Taron tells him about hunting the best fried chicken in Seoul with Dexter, about Hugh dragging him up on stage at Greenwich, about his mother, genuinely, asking after Edward’s health whenever he goes home. 

His phone vibrates, and it’s rude to check it but he does. Habit. 

_Try Slowthai_ , Richard’s told him. _Makes me think of Eggsy. No class._

It’s ridiculously appropriate, and he grins. Shows Edward. Forgets Richard is labelled _Dick_ in his phone for shits and giggles. It hardly matters.

“He seems like an upright bloke,” Edward says, and Taron nods, earnestly, his head feeling heavy even though he’s barely yet tipsy.

“He is, god, he really is.”

“You always get so tight with everyone on set,” Edward tells him, smiling. It’s a statement, neither compliment nor judgement, but Taron suddenly feels embarrassingly bare. Like Edward’s seen something immediately that it took Taron months, years to notice.

“Well, I’m just so easy to like,” Taron says, blithe and blustering.

“I don’t think you know the half of it.” 

He’ll think about that a lot, later. After he calls Richard. But for now it’s easy to laugh like Edward just made a pithy joke, and neck a fourth beer. No need to answer that way.

*

“You keeping up with Ben?” Taron asks, trying to make it sound like small talk. _Ben_. As if he’s mates with Ben Bloody Whishaw.

Edward shrugs easily. “Sure, we catch up now and then.”

“Gets kind of weird when you’ve pretended to fuck, right?” 

Taron says it unthinkingly. A shared experience, he assumes. Not that he would describe his relationship with Richard as _weird_ , but from an outsider perspective, yeah, maybe it is weird to roll around in bed with another guy for two days and then carry on, unbothered, just chums.

He catches the odd expression that dashes across Edward’s face. A kind of surprise, taken aback, quickly smothered. “Weird how?”

Taron doesn’t know how to phrase it without feeling like he’s slitting open his stomach and revealing his innards, holding them out for Edward to divine. “You know. Kind of—messy, emotionally, I guess.”

“It’s just work,” Edward says, looking at him sidelong. 

“Right,” Taron swallows, not returning his gaze. “Right.”

*

Places to be, music to see. Edward gives him another one of those laddish hugs, see-you-soon and still wonderful, and asks whereabouts Taron is camped.

“Oh, I have a tipi,” he admits.

Edward’s eyebrows raise. “Wasn’t this a last minute jaunt? They sold out months back.”

“Right,” Taron says, feeling immediately like a prick. His publicity team had pulled some backstage strings, probably name-dropped Elton. He arrived in a fucking _helicopter._ He shrugs, as if to say, _that’s life, huh!_

Edward just gives him a once-over and a crooked smile. “We’ll do dinner,” he says. “Have your people call my people.”

It might be mockery or it might be an offer. Taron will find out later. For now he just watches Edward and his mates drift out of the bar and into the rollicking sea of people, looking until they suddenly seem to vanish, all the passing faces once more just strangers.

He thinks about getting another beer, or something stronger.

Instead, he—

Instead, he finds a grotty oasis, a humid corridor between gazebos next to the stacked gas canisters and fizzing generators, and he calls Richard. Puts his phone to his ear. 

It rings for a long time. He knows it’s mid-morning in LA by now, at least.

Keeps just ringing, though.

And then he hears Richard’s voice, polite but bored, pre-recorded, asking him impersonally to leave a message. 

Taron hangs up. There’s sweat from his cheek on the screen of his phone, and he wipes it absently across his chest. 

Might as well get that beer.

*

He drinks often enough to keep a low buzz going the whole day, no more, no less. It’s not pleasant but it makes every edge a little less sharp, including his own; makes it easy, when he’s good-naturedly recognised and pulled into selfies with strangers, to smile, shake hands, be a pal. He avoids the heaviest flow of the crowds, and instead sits at the back of a dark, close tent listening to beat poetry and eco-warrior performance art, eating vegan hot dogs out of a bamboo tray. 

A twenty-something girl does an amazing spoken-word riff on the lyrics to _Someone Saved My Life Last Night_ and Taron frantically taps out the best verse on his phone, emails it to Richard.

Richard still hasn’t called him back, though.

The good part of the day - the best part of the day - is when night falls and he followers the ravers and glow-sticks to the Dance Village. Just missed Idris Elba, he overhears - they met once, a mutual friend in Tom Hardy, and Taron briefly feels like this entire day has been a ship passing by him, unnoticed, in a heavy fog - but by the time he fights towards the middle of the crowd, the PA stops blaring placeholder jams and Faithless take over. The music of his mid-teens, headphones and homework, saving up to buy CDs with cracked cases from charity shops. 

He’s not entirely drunk enough to lose himself dancing, a self-awareness that makes his limbs heavy, but by the time _God is a DJ_ blares euphorically out across the crowd, Taron has decided not to care. Everyone is dancing with themselves. He’s covered in other people’s sweat and doesn’t even smell like he should. Utterly, gloriously anonymous.

*

He and Richard had spent half a day in Hollywood’s vinyl stores, not long after he moved out there, swapping old favourites. Richard always had an acoustic streak in him, but he was hitting the clubs a few years earlier than Taron, knows his way around EDM. “Gay bars love a good beat,” he’d said, rolling his eyes, and had seemed to watch Taron a little carefully for a reaction to that.

But Taron had just waved a Cascada record in his face and waggled his eyebrows. 

What else was he meant to say?

*

He’s got a missed called - no message - and two texts on his phone. Reads them as he’s wandering, light-headed, through the 3am diaspora. 

_Call me whenever,_ is the first one, followed, ten minutes later, by _Or have some fucking fun, suit yourself._

It’s in jest, but Taron finds his pace picking up. Wants to get back to his stupid fucking tipi, sluice the whole day off his skin under a blazing shower, and call Richard.

That’s all he wants.

*

It takes him longer to settle than he expected. Too hot for anything but his pants, Taron still clambers under the blankets, knowing he’ll never sleep without the weight of it on top of him. His phone is almost dead so he plugs it into the little USB jack provided, absurd luxury, in his colossal tent. He puts it on the bedside table. Then makes a _tch_ noise and lays it on the pillow next to him. Wriggles deeper into bed, unsure for a long time whether he wants to lay on his back or on his side. Gets up altogether, fetches a glass of water, chugs and refills it, and then returns to bed almost forcefully - as though this time he’ll get comfortable for sure.

Miserably, Taron rolls over, burying his face into the pillow. A stupid sob escapes his lungs, just one, a smothered inhale that shames him immediately, makes him buck up his entire attitude. Breathe in, breathe out.

Then he calls Richard.

He picks up this time, after the first ring. Phone in hand, Taron guesses, putting him on loudspeaker.

“What’s new, T?” he asks, blissfully breezy.

“Am I interrupting?”

“I’m drinking Huel and watching _Jane the Virgin_.”

Taron grins. “Couldn’t possibly take a call, then.”

“Absolutely stacked, mate.”

Warm relief trickles down his throat and into his belly at the sound of Richard’s easy conversation. They’ve done this before: the time difference making it perfect for Richard to talk Taron to sleep, though it’s usually when Taron’s at a hotel he’s forgotten the name of or his childhood bedroom back in Aberystwyth. Richard, he knows, is well aware of how deeply Taron _feels_ \- joy, sure, and pride, and excitement, but melancholy too. That biting loneliness. 

“Tell me something.”

“What’re you looking to know?”

“Anything,” Taron mumbles, and Richard doesn’t make him work any harder than that. Richard’s just always been so happy to oblige him. So completely calm about the undefined closeness of their relationship.

He talks shit, and it’s exactly what Taron needs. Talks about how abysmal half the scripts passing through his radar are - summarises a couple of the worst, wildly against protocol, but Taron snorts with laughter at his cool disdain. He tells Taron about this incredible juice bar he’s started going to, yoghurt from Greece, ginger and lemongrass from Thailand, incredibly sweet Indian mangoes, coconuts grown a hundred feet up in Indonesia. “They say it’s clean eating but I dread counting the airmiles that makes one fucking smoothie,” Richard opines, and it makes Taron laugh again, soft and tired. 

Then: “I miss you, mate.”

Taron doesn’t realise for a second it’s him who’s said it. Hearing the words in his own voice as though recorded on tape rather than spoken aloud.

“I don’t know why you insisted on going on your own,” Richard says, not quite chastising him. “You know how you get.”

“I thought I wanted some me-time,” Taron says miserably.

“Did you?”

“No. I dunno? I dunno.”

“Why don’t you know?” Richard asks, not at all facetiously. 

Taron shrugs, almost helpless and mostly for himself. “I get overwhelmed. By people, I guess. But I think my brain overwhelms me too.”

“I think you might be right,” Richard hums. And then: “You should come over. Come out here,” he says, and Taron huffs out another laugh, tight this time.

“I shouldn’t even be _here_. I’m meant to be in Seattle already.”

“I’m serious, mate. We’ll put you up in the spare room. ‘Taron’s Room; no girls allowed.’ We’ll get blazed. You can chip in a third of the rent.”

Taron rolls his eyes so hard Richard can probably hear it. “Yeah, I don’t think my cut of the _Robin Hood_ takings is really gonna cover West Hollywood rent.”

“You’re a superstar, T.”

“Fuck off.”

Richard’s voice is all of a sudden so gentle. “You don’t get it, do you. This is it. The edge of the stratosphere.”

“That seems like some kind of general consensus today.”

“Don’t brush it off,” Richard says, painfully earnest. But he does, he must. What else can he do with such freely given praise? Richard has always said it, and Taron’s never quite believed. 

There’s a long, strained silence. Taron can hear Richard’s calm breath on the other end of the phone and, when he shuts his eyes, it’s almost like Richard is lying in the bed beside him: familiar weight, familiar scent, he can imagine it so crisply. 

“You asleep?” Richard asks quietly.

“No.”

Richard hesitates. “You think having a wank would help you drift off?” He doesn’t say it to shock or make fun. Just a genuine suggestion. 

“Yeah, probably,” Taron mutters.

Richard pauses for the smallest moment. “I can talk you through it, if you like.”

Taron hesitates too. They—

They’ve kind of done it before. Not explicitly. Not laid bare like that. Just Taron with his hand idly on his dick, maybe Richard doing the same, maybe not, he couldn’t quite tell from the timbre of Richard’s breathing, at the time. 

He’s lying on one side of a king bed and all that’s on the other is his phone.

“Alright,” Taron whispers.

“Alright,” Richard agrees. “Get yourself comfy.”

It’s already too hot. Taron considers throwing off the blanket and then feels too exposed by it; instead, he shifts his knees up to tent up the bedsheets, get some space around his dick. He shimmies out of his pants entirely, naked in his humid cocoon, and then, an afterthought, grabs his mobile and turns off speakerphone. Lies his cheek on the pillow and carefully balances his phone over his ear, held in place by his clammy skin; hands free.

“Can you put your hand on your cock for me?” Richard asks softly.

Taron mumbles a noise of assent. Right hand on his dick, palmed a few times. He isn’t sure how instructive Richard intends to be, doesn’t want to jump ahead of the itinerary.

He can hear Richard chewing his lip, considering. “It’s hot there, right?”

“Un-fucking-bearable.”

“Wipe your hand under your knee. Where you’re sweating,” Richard clarifies. “Use that.”

“Jesus,” Taron breathes, but he does it. It’s true that he’s slick there, sweat pooling into thick droplets. It makes his palm damp, and slippery enough.

“I want you to fuck your fist,” Richard tells him, so matter of fact. “Don’t take it too fast. Pace yourself.”

Taron lets his eyes close. It doesn’t take long to get hard; he thinks, in fact, the strange loneliness of the day has primed him for it. Richard’s murmuring him through it, not even dirty talk, just a calm stream of consciousness - _Feels good, right? Feels pretty nice?_ \- a kind of erotic white noise. Taron’s not picturing Richard’s hands on him, not thinking about the brief press of Richard’s dick against his thigh, once, just that one time on set; his mind feels slow and empty for the first time all day, filled by Richard’s low, comforting burr.

“Little bit faster, now,” Richard tells him.

“Yeah,” Taron sighs, obliging. 

And then—

And then Richard seems to cover the speaker of his phone with his hand. Muffled, unintelligible speaking on his end of the line, not to Taron, but to someone there, with him, in the room.

Taron’s fist stills immediately. “What’s up?” 

“It’s nothing,” Richard says. “Brandon’s home, is all.”

For a second, Taron doesn’t take his hand off his dick. He can’t move his head or his phone will fall off it. He feels horrifyingly trapped, as though caught, as though someone’s burst into his dumb fucking tipi and papped him, fist on dick, gleeful.

“You want me to carry on?” Richard asks carefully.

His orgasm is a long way off; even longer now. 

“Nah,” Taron says, wiping his hand on the blanket. “Nah, it’s cool.”

He can hear Brandon’s footsteps echoing around their Hollywood loft, and wishes Richard would start talking again. But it’s passed, the moment gone. Interrupted. 

“I should go,” Taron says, because he feels like that’s what he’s meant to say now.

“Mate, you don’t have to—”

“No, no,” he says, that same blithe energy as when he was naysaying Edward. “Honestly, it’s fine, I gotta take the stupidest flight from Bristol tomorrow, it’s like a two hour stopover in Amsterdam.”

“Economy?”

“Business class, baby,” Taron says, grinning. It’s not a real grin, but there’s no-one here to check.

“Living the dream,” Richard says, not entirely sarcastic. Completely easy, as though he wasn’t, a minute ago, telling Taron exactly how firm to grip his dick.

“I’ll see you soon, Dickie.”

“Promise?” 

“Promise.”

“I’m always here, T,” Richard says gently, and Taron hears Brandon say something - his tone entirely unreadable - in the background. 

Taron hangs up without saying goodbye.

His phone slides off his ear onto the pillow as he looks up at the ceiling. The dark, sloping canvas, trailing up to a pinched point like a black hole. The world is quiet again. Not silent: the occasional sound of a tent door flapping open, bare feet crunching over the dry grass, cackles of distant laughter and bursts of song, relieving the day.

His hand is still clammy with sweat. He should get up and wash it, really. But he doesn’t.

Taron’s phone pings softly, muffled by the bedsheets. 

Richard, of course. _Sleep well,_ is all he says.

So Taron breathes in, a deep inhale that fills his lungs to the point of pain, then sighs out, as though everything on his mind is expelled in that shaking breath, and closes his eyes, and tries to sleep. 

He really, really tries.


End file.
